Former U.S. Army Ranger, Barry Todd, was out celebrating a professional milestone with his wife and several friends at a local watering hole in Yuma, Arizona, when he was attacked by a drunken patron along with some buddies. Barry was slammed headfirst into a cement wall, incurring a concussion and other bodily injuries until his gun went off and shot the man who’d insisted on attacking him.

The police were called and incomprehensibly arrested Barry, who explains how self-defense and stand your ground laws don’t always protect you as they should. Police in his case didn’t actually know the law in Arizona, and elected DAs often pursue charges & convictions rather than the truth, as is their legal obligation. Barry also discovered that one friend of his attackers was linked to the local police.

Barry walks us through his battle of five years to get his case dismissed, and his record cleared, and how he feels a calling to help anyone unfairly charged with a crime. All proceeds from his book, “Stand Your Ground: One Man’s Self Defense Nightmare,” go to his foundation that helps the charged person and their attorney successfully get their case dismissed.

The original culprit was never charged.

Heroes Behind Headlines
Executive Producer Ralph Pezzullo
Produced & Engineered by Mike Dawson
Music provided by ExtremeMusic.com

California State Assemblyman Mike Gatto was a rising star in the California Democratic Party when on November 12th, 2013, his retired father Joseph Gatto was found murdered in their family home in the neighborhood of Los Angeles. Emotionally devastated, Mike put his career on hold to pursue his father's murderer. With very few clues nad more questions than evidence, the murder has never been solved, and the rate of unsolved murders is higher than ever.

Mike recounts the facts of this still unsolved crime, and his own experience grappling with his grief. He asks anyone with information about the murder to step forward.

Heroes Behind Headlines
Executive Producer Ralph Pezzullo
Produced & Engineered by Mike Dawson
Music provided by ExtremeMusic.com

Proud Canadian and innovative thinker and author, Jeff Brown was flattered beyond when Sophie Trudeau, (his country’s “first lady” at the time.) reached out to compliment his writing and aphorisms, and engage him to think about ideas that expressed the spirit of what Justin Trudeau and his wife sought to communicate as part of their platform.

At their first meeting, Sophie quickly disclosed her own dissatisfaction in her marriage, and proceeded to behave in a flirty and what felt inappropriate manner through their subsequent conversations and collaborations, both live and virtual. Uncomfortable as an unpaid, uncredited speech writer, and deeply distressed by his growing insight into the Trudeaus’ life, marriage, and hypocrisy, Jeff sought to separate in a civil manner, putting polite space between them and retreating from future requests.

And then the nightmare began… Sophie sought to pressure Jeff to stay tethered to the ‘first couple,’ and when he resisted, Jeff and his wife were subjected to a four-year whirlwind of digital surveillance, political pressure, and personal transformation which reshaped his understanding of trust, truth and freedom.social ostracism, government monitoring, and even harassment, including the suppression of his book about the experience, In Trudeau’s Kitchen. Jeff describes how an ordinary citizen can become the target of not only the political world— but of a hidden network of covert systems, governmental agencies, and corporations. His book stands as a warning to all of us.

Heroes Behind Headlines
Executive Producer Ralph Pezzullo
Produced & Engineered by Mike Dawson
Music provided by ExtremeMusic.com